Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/681

 BUBLBIGH V. TOWN OF EOCHESTEB. 669 �Although Thompson used the bonds as his own, and gave them as collateral security to the bank, he claims that they really belonged to his wife ; and it appears f rom the testi- mony, oral as well as written, that in some transactions which she had with Mason she was regarded as the owner of the bonds. Thompson, who has been examined as a witness, claims that he or his family, his wife being dead, and he being her representative, still retains an interest in the bonds; but I think the weight of the evidence must be considered to be in favor of the conclusion that he and his wife parted with. their interest in the bonds as early as 1868, and that the entire ownership of the bonds was in Mason when he trans- ferred them to John H. Burleigh, through the agency of John Hall, in the faU of 1875. �Thompson insists that by an arrangement between himself and Mason, there still being a joint ownership between them in the bonds, they were transferred to Burleigh without his really having any interest in them, but simply for the pur- pose of their being in the hands of a bonafide holder, without any notice of the judicial proceedings which hadtaken place in relation to them in the courts of Wisconsin, to which reference will presently be made ; but I think that the evidence in opposi- tion to this claim of Thompson is so strong that the court must find that Burleigh became the real and not the mere colorable owner of the bonds. Mr. Hall states explicitly that as the agent of Mason he sold the bonds to Burleigh at 25 cents on the dollar, received the money, or its equivalent, and turned it bver to Mason ; and the fact that Burleigh, in July, 1876, paid to Mr. Carpenter $500, as his counsel, to prose- cute the suit in his name on these bonds, and that there is no satisfactory evidence that this money was ever returned to him, either by Mason or Thompson, shows that he con- sidered himself the real and not the nominal owner of the bonds. Whether Mason, at the time that he first purchased these bonds, knew what had taken place in the courts of Wisconsin, is not, perhaps, entirely clear. He says posi- tively that he had no knowledge whatever upon the subject. Thompson asserts, with equal confidence, that he had full ����